until twenty-four hours have passed.”
“She wouldn’t just
“Look, kid,” the cop said. “It wouldn’t be the first time some guy’s new wife panicked and ran off. You want my advice? Start calling up her old boyfriends.”
“But—”
The cop thumped a finger into the young man’s chest. “Get over it, buddy. Come back in twenty-four hours.” He turned to walk away from the young man and almost bumped into me. He took a step back and scowled up at me. “You want something?”
“Just basking in the glow of your compassion, Officer,” I replied.
His face darkened into a scowl, but before he could take a deep breath and start throwing his weight around, Mac pushed a mug of his dark ale into the cop’s hand. The cop slugged it back immediately. He swished the last gulp around in his mouth, purely for form, and then tossed the mug back at McAnally, belched, and went on his way.
“Mr. McAnally,” the young man said, turning to Mac. “Thank goodness. I still haven’t seen her.” He looked at me. “Is this him?”
Mac nodded.
I stuck out my hand. “Harry Dresden.”
“Roger Braddock,” the anxious young man said. “Someone has abducted my wife.”
He gripped too hard, and his fingers were cold and a little clammy. I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but Braddock was genuinely afraid. “Abducted her? Did you see it happen?”
“Well,” he said, “no. Not really. No one did. But she
I arched an eyebrow. “You put your honeymoon on hold to go to a beer festival?”
“I’m opening my own place,” Braddock said. “Mr. McAnally has been giving me advice. Sort of mentoring me. This was . . . I mean, I’ve been here every year, and it’s only once a year, and the prestige from a win is . . . The networking and ...” His voice trailed off as he looked around.
Yeah. The looming specter of sudden loss has a way of making you reevaluate things. Sometimes it’s tough to know what’s really important until you realize it might be gone.
“You two were at this booth?” I prompted.
“Yes,” he said. He licked his lips. “She went to pick up some napkins from the bar, right over there. She wasn’t twenty feet away and somehow she just vanished.”
Personally, I was more inclined to go with the cop’s line of reasoning than the kid’s. People in general tend to be selfish, greedy, and unreliable. There are individual exceptions, of course, but no one ever wants to believe that the petty portions of human nature might have come between themselves and someone they care about.
The kid seemed awfully sincere, but endearing, awfully sincere people, their decisions driven mostly by their emotions, are capable of being mistaken on an epic scale. The worse the situation looks, the harder they’ll search for reasons not to believe it. It seemed more likely that his girl left him than that someone took her away.
On the other hand, likely isn’t the same as true—and Mac isn’t the kind to cry wolf.
“How long you two been together?” I asked Braddock.
“Since we were fifteen,” he replied. An anemic smile fluttered around his mouth. “Almost ten years.”
“Making it official, eh?”
“We both knew when it was right,” he replied. He lost the smile. “Just like I know she didn’t walk away. Not unless someone made her do it.”
I stepped around Braddock and studied the high-backed booth for a moment. A keg sat on the table, next to a little cardstock sign that had a cartoon bee decked out with a Viking-style helmet, a baldric, and a greatsword. Words beneath the bee proclaimed BRADDOCK’S MIDNIGHT SUN CINNAMON.
I grunted and reached down, pulling a simple black leather ladies’ purse from beneath the bench seating. Not an expensive purse, either. “Not much chance she’d walk without taking her bag,” I said. “That’s for damn sure.”
Braddock bit his lip, closed his eyes, and said, “Elizabeth.”
I sighed.
Well, dammit.
Now she had a name.
Elizabeth Braddock, newlywed—maybe she’d just run off, but maybe she hadn’t. I didn’t think I would like myself very much if I walked and it turned out that she really was in danger and really did get hurt.
What the hell? No harm in looking around.
“I guess the game’s afoot,” I said. I gestured vaguely with the purse. “May I?”
“Sure,” Braddock said. “Sure, sure.”
I dumped Elizabeth’s purse out on the booth’s table, behind the beer keg, and began rummaging through it. The usual—a wallet, some makeup, a cell phone, Kleenex, some feminine sanitary sundries, one of those plastic birth control pill holders with a folded piece of paper taped to it.
And there was a hairbrush, an antique-looking thing with a long, pointy silver handle.
I plucked several strands of dark wavy hair from the brush. “Is this your wife’s hair?”
Braddock blinked at me for a second, then nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
“Mind if I borrow this?”
He didn’t. I pocketed the brush for the moment and glanced at the birth control pill case. I opened it. Only the first several slots were empty. I untaped the folded paper and opened it, finding instructions for the medicine’s use.
Who keeps the instruction sheet, for crying out loud?
While I pondered it, a shadow fell across Braddock, and a beefy, heavily tattooed arm shoved him back against the spine of the partition between booths.
I looked up the arm to the beefy, heavily tattooed bruiser attached to it. He was only a couple of inches shorter than me, and layered with muscle gone to seed. He was bald and sported a bristling beard. Scar tissue around his eyes told me he’d been a fighter, and a lumpy, often-broken nose suggested that he might not have been much good at it. He wore black leather and rings heavy enough to serve as passable brass knuckles on every finger of his right hand. His voice was like the rest of him—thick and dull. He flung a little triangle of folded cardstock at Braddock. “Where’s my keg, Braddock?”
“Caine,” Braddock stammered, “what are you talking about?”
“My keg, bitch,” the big man snarled. A couple of guys who wished they were more like Caine lurked behind him, propping up his ego. “It’s gone. You figure you couldn’t take the competition this year?”
I glanced at the fallen table tent. It also had a little Wagnerian cartoon bee on it, and the lettering, CAINE’S KICKASS.
“I don’t have time for this,” Braddock said.
Caine shoved him back against the booth again, harder. “We ain’t done. Stay put, bitch, unless you want me to feed you your ass.”
I glanced at Mac, who stared at Caine, frowning, but not doing anything. Mac doesn’t like to get involved.
He’s smarter than I am.
I stepped forward, seized Caine’s hand in mine, and pumped it enthusiastically. “Hi, there. Harry Dresden, PI. How you doing?” I nodded at him, smiling, and smiled at his friends, too. “Hey, are you allergic to dogs?”
Caine was so startled that he almost forgot to try crushing my hand in his. When he got around to it, it hurt enough that I had to work not to wince. I’m not heavily built, but I’m more than six and a half feet tall, and it takes more strength than most have to make me feel it.
“What?” he said wittily. “Dog, what?”
“Allergic to dogs,” I clarified, and nodded down at Mouse. “Occasionally someone has a bad reaction to my dog, and I’d hate that to happen here.”
The biker scowled at me and then looked down.
